She
watches it erupt into hissing flames, tangerine and sanguine and
cackling. For a graceful, choking instant, the scene halts,
pauses.

And then it topples. Her windows crumple, the walls
topple, the shingles of the roof are strewn in charred shards across
the broiled grass. The hot, supple fire is everywhere, ubiquitous and
ravenous, devouring her home.

She can't bring herself to
care.

All it was was a box of regrets, really. Those who would
have still wanted it erect aren't here.

And they won't be
either. They're locked and dusty in their own boxes, mahogany and oak
and maple, rich soil teeming around them.

They're gone, and
she's left, withered and fragmented and detached. Her limbs are
mechanical, her lips move artlessly, her thoughts are whirring into
delusion.

It's ended so terribly. She can't even tell who's
won.

She doesn't want to think about it. It would mean that
someone, somewhere is triumphant.

She's not sure anyone
deserve jubilation, when there are those like her, sheaths filled
with arsenic murmurs, tangoing into angst.

His arms wind
around her, his knukles rap against her spine, his wrists are fussing
with her cold palms.

She always thought he was cold, so cold
and lifeless and she was warm and beaming and radiance.

Now
his pulse is quicker than hers.

How ironic.

She doesn't
care. Irony dies into twilight and loss.

She lets him kiss
her, and maybe, maybe the warmth will flare between them again. Maybe
it'll ooze over her fingertips again.

He hopes so.

Her
hope is smoldering, burning with the past.

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